Hi, I’m Joe V. The V is for Vadeboncoeur, but no one ever really calls me that (except my business card). That card also calls me the Global Director of Product Development, Marketing and Creative Design for Trek Bicycle. Yep, I am sometimes not really sure what all that means either. I do know that I dig bikes, oatmeal, motorcycles, burritos, the weird things I see along the way, my family and my job. I get to travel the world helping make great bikes, so it’s a pretty great gig.

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April 02, 2009

Bonty Bamboozle

Recipe for a great practical joke:1. A Willing Audience- Often referred to as "The Mark". The target has to be willing to listen to your message and willing to believe what you tell them. News about Lance in the bike industry is like Grey's Anatomy to middle-aged housewives. They crave it like oxygen.2. Realism- The farce has to have some meat on the bones that make you stop and think about whether it could be real or not. 3. The Pay Off- The overall premise has to be ridiculous. The Onion has made its entire living on this fact.

All these ingredients went into Bontrager's April Fools joke. We fancy ourselves quality pranksters here in the Loo and when late March rolls around the wheels start to turn. Beef bouillon cubes placed under the shower caps in the womens bathroom was one idea but that seemed.....smelly. Then Lance falls off his bike and presents us with the perfect opportunity to tie-in Bontrager inForm technology.

Industrial Designer, Hans, was tasked with creating the replacement clavicle and went right to work. After a little research on the design of the clavicle bone and a little measuring tape action, he was ready to prototype. Some may argue that using our super-expensive prototyping machine to produce a fake bone for practical joking purposes is a misuse of resources but I'd argue that when you're about to get somebody good, no expense can be spared. Especially when that "somebody" is the "world". After the bone was finished it was time to shoot it in a believable setting so we hit the carbon room with some rubber gloves in on our on-site factory to get the shot. After borrowing an x-ray of a broken right clavicle from the world-wide interweb we hit up the Photoshopping skills of our photo studio to take the giggle fest to the next level. The "implant" was added to the x-ray and a carbon weave was added to the picture of the actual piece. For the finishing touch, our copywriter put some words to paper with some "credible" sources lending quotations and we were ready to roll.

Consider yourself bamboozled! Big props to all of the Trek peeps who brought this together. If anybody asks, this was all done on personal time.